a difficult (for me anyways) game idea

[Erinoth]

The game idea I had is for people to play the heads of the major governments of Rifts Earth. The plan is to advance the world as a whole. Having players run the major and important minor factions running political negotiations and/or black ops. As they expand their influence into more distant regions discovering each other. would be alot of political stuff I don't do very well. I would like to know what other people think of this as a possible game scenario.

[Killer Cyborg]

Definitely possible to do.
Might be tricky with Palladium's system.

[Bill]

I don't think it's really doable as a RPG. How often would all of the player characters be in the same scene? As a board game, like Diplomacy or Risk, it could be made to work. Sounds like a lot of effort to put into a game that you may not play often though. On the other hand, if you could pitch it to Palladium, it might make a decent project for publication. Assuming of course that they have the resources necessary to support it.

[Dark]

I suggest taking a look at Birthright, an older D&D setting.

Playing rulers and whatnot is very doable, IMO.

Do the characters in Game of Thrones, for example, not have and/or go on adventures?

You just have to balance the plot to giving meaningful stakes, challenges, and rewards to everyone. And if having players together for playing directly involved scenes is something you view as necessary consider having them all be in the same court/faction etc. as the major movers/shakers of that group.

[Erinoth]

I was thinking it would work in a play by post type of game. Especially with the players most likely plottiing against each other.
I could do it in a fantasy setting, but I really like the idea of rifts setting

[Bill]

Oh, sure. That can work. The role-playing aspect is kind of minimal there. You'd need to depart significantly from the standard megaversal rules for it though. I think you'll have to establish the time increment of a turn as a month or more for starters. Then decide how many turns different actions should take and how many orders a player can give in any given turn. Like ordering an attack may take less than a turn if military assets are available, but training military assets will take three months for conscript infantry to six years for magic specialists. And if it's a small nation like Manistique the player just wont be able to do as much as a multiple-world spanning empire like Splynn.

Action resolution can still be left up to a roll-under percentile or contested D20 though, so it'll feel a lot like Rifts. You'll just have to work out names for the abilities employed in the rulership of a nation and consistent modifiers for different actions. For example, if the leader of the Manistique Imperium wanted to do some industrial espionage on Free Quebec, she'd roll Intelligence Gathering modified by the number of turns she's willing to give her operatives as well as the number and quality of those operatives; which you'd define as part of the nation's resources. Success on the roll would return a temporary or permanent bonus to the military, commercial, or infrastructure resources of Manistique while failure would result in a loss of intelligence gathering resources and a possible increase in hostilities between the two countries.

You might want to read up on government simulation games for ideas.